Realms In The Firmament

The reason why Ye Xiao tried to earn some money quickly was so that he could buy some treasures at the auction to feed the spiritual space. He had successfully obtained the money, but now the auction was delayed....

Ten days was not a very long time, but the problem was that, Ye Xiao couldn’t wait any longer. Not even one more day!

“By the way, how is the robbery case... you know, of your house?” Ye Xiao was feeling depressed so he changed the topic to ask about what he was interested in most at the moment.

Zuo Wu-Ji’s grandfather Mr Zuo, the father of the minister, had searched in every nook and cranny of the capital, Chen-Xing City, several times. Now the whole city had a dense mist of nervousness hanging over it and now, even the most insignificant of sounds could instill the greatest of fears in the hearts of the residents. The public security had even become unprecedentedly tight - thanks to Zuo Wu-Ji’s grandfather.

“Skip it!” Zuo Wu-Ji looked pale, “That night I was nearly killed. My grandfather came back home and found that most of his collection had been stolen which had made him furious! These days there is no one in the house that dares to speak out loud…”

Ye Xiao said modestly, “It seems that your grandfather must have lost something extremely valuable in that robbery…”

“Apparently so…” Zuo Wu-Ji sighed, “I haven’t seen my grandpa this angry since I was a baby… Now the whole city has been thrown upside down because of my family and yet my grandpa still isn’t willing to let it go…”

Ye Xiao replied with an ‘oh’ before asking thoughtfully, “Well then, did your grandpa specify which was the most valuable piece amongst the stolen treasures?”

“Who would dare to ask him in his current condition?” Zuo Wu-Ji shouted, feeling wronged, “At the time I had only said one word, but I got immediately beaten several times…”

Lan Lang-Lang showed deep interests, “What exactly did you say?”

“Nothing special… I just said ‘be off with the old and move on with the new. Don’t worry grandpa’ …” Zuo Wu-Ji felt like weeping but was lacking tears, “Then he had suddenly entered a frenzy and shouted, ‘You damn black sheep! It is this damn attitude of yours with which you steal every valuable thing in this house and exchange them for prostitutes and alcohol’ … then he gave me a beating!”

Zuo Wu-Ji spoke sadly, “Tell me, what have I done wrong? I said those words only to comfort him, and yet I got mercilessly beaten. Did I really doom myself to a thrashing?”

“Eh-hem, hemm…” Ye Xiao started to cough loudly in an attempt to conceal the laughter that was boiling up inside of him.

“Arhahahahah..whooppahaha...” Lan Lang-Lang didn’t even try to cover up his laughter; instead he laughed gloatingly.

Lan Lang-Lang and Zuo Wu-Ji had become extremely bored due to the auction being delayed, so they had come over to see Ye Xiao. Zuo Wu-Ji had always been hostile towards Ye Xiao - they disliked each other. However, this had all changed after the ‘great favor’ from Ye Xiao. He had even started to consider Ye Xiao to be a true friend, and so, he had come over to Ye Xiao with Lan Lang-Lang to complain about the auction and their boredom and perhaps to score a free meal from Ye Xiao.

Ye Xiao smiled and looked through the window at the dark night sky as he lightly said, “The robbery… maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing for your clan… There is an old saying which says that luck and misfortune come in turns… Maybe, for the loss you have suffered today it will be repaid a thousand times in the future…”

Ye Xiao spoke very slowly. It seemed like what he was saying had some obscure meanings.

Zuo Wu-Ji sighed. He didn’t know what Ye Xiao had really meant. He didn’t understand that it was actually a precious promise. He could only feel bad about his own misery at the moment, “Alas, don’t talk about making it up…Right now I become scared enough to piss every time I see my grandpa … I’d better fix my own issues first. The bloody auction, how could they fxxking delay it? The bloody moron with his supreme dan beads. If I get a chance to meet him… I promise, I will tear him into a million shreds…”

He let out another sigh which was filled with endless sadness.

“Oh I see why you two have come here. The auction is delayed and you guys are slowly dying due to boredom, right? So you are here to seek some amusement from me, right?” Ye Xiao looked at them with amusement.

The delay of the auction had been troubling him as well, even more so, after finding out that he had become the reason for this delay.

Besides… Lan Lang-Lang and Zuo Wu-Ji could complain about it out loud while he couldn’t say a word about it!

And they were even calling him a moron right to his face. He really felt like giving these two in front of him an asswhooping. Though he found it extremely painful to tolerate their trash talking, he still had to!

“Heh heh heh… Oh right, I know of a freakish occurrence which might interest you, brother Ye. Do you remember the Shan-Hua House?” Zuo Wu-Ji asked.

“Hmm?” Ye Xiao’s eyes turned cold with chilliness emanating from them.

How could he forget the place where he - or should we say the departed Ye Xiao - got poisoned: the brothel Shan-Hua House.

“Ninety-eight people in Shan-Hua House were all killed. Everyone in that house is dead, no survivors.” Zuo Wu-Ji sighed regretfully, “I was going to have some fun there during this rough time, you know, with those pretty chicks. When I got there, all I saw were rotting corpses. That was really disappointing… It is a pity about those pretty gals…”

“What? All dead?” Ye Xiao frowned tightly.

“All dead.” Zuo Wu-Ji nodded, “And… according to the signs on their bodies, they must have died several days ago. The government are terribly distracted because of the robbery, to even miss so many dead bodies.”

“Oh.” Ye Xiao felt relieved and thought, “They’ve been dead for several days, so the murder has nothing to do with the robbery. It seems that... right after I was poisoned when I was struggling to survive, these people in Shan-Hua House had already been killed. Everyone in that brothel had been taken care of, eliminating any possible clue!”

The man who planned this murder is truly wicked and merciless!

“Zuo Wu-Ji, do you know the identity of Shan-Hua House’s owner?” Ye Xiao probed, “The whole house was wiped out and still the owner had not yet shown up?”

Zuo Wu-Ji scratched his head and said, “Well this is a tough question for me. I am not so sure to be honest… However, it is said that the house is related to Wan Xiao-nian, but… there is no basis for these claims.”

“Wang Xiao-Nian?” Ye Xiao said with half-closed eyes, “That’s… The son of Wang Da-Nian, the personal guard of the crown prince, the leader of the guards in the Crown Prince’s Palace, right?”

“Yes, that’s him.” Zuo Wu-Ji smiled, “This bastard Wang Xiao-Nian was boasting a few days ago that his father had received a hundreds-years old top-quality blood ginseng, which was to be used to improve his strength. It is said that that ginseng can make a man reach the upper-level cultivation and become an expert cultivator in just one night… Fxxk that! The bastard is really boasting. I hate every bit of him! Well, at the end of the day, the murders at the brothel have nothing to do with us. We just lost a nice place to enjoy ourselves…”

“Enjoy? Is your disease cured?” He looked at Zuo Wu-Ji sportively. The ‘hundreds-years old quality blood ginseng’ had lit up Ye Xiao’s eyes.

Zuo Wu-Ji turned red-faced and shouted, “Ye Xiao! Don’t force me to fight against you!” He had forgotten what he had said about the blood ginseng instantly.

Lan Lang-Lang almost split his sides due to laughing vigorously and caused his hat to nearly fall off his favus infested head . He grinned, “Oh can’t we say the truth about you any more? You went to the brothel time to time and how many times did you fxxk a girl? Is there any time you are not the one being fxxked? hahahaha.... There are six prostitutes sworn brother and sister with you, and I heard that you are the youngest? Lord Zuo, you are actually very well-known as the famous Gal No.7…”

“Fxxking bastard!” Hearing the word ‘Gal No.7’, Zuo Wu-Ji turned into a raging beast. He rushed forward to hold Lan Lang-Lang and gave him punches and kicks, while Lan Lang-Lang was laughing and got into a clinch with him.

As a matter of fact, though Zuo Wu-Ji had a foppish personality, he had an inborn disease, which was unspeakable. Eh-hem. Well… he couldn’t do that thing - you know. Normally it was something a man would never tell, but the foppish and prodigal lord Zuo was liberal to face such defect. It was really something strange…

After the horseplay, Zuo Wu-Ji felt sad and sighed, “The auction is delayed, but I heard that these supreme dan beads are something better than the best, with quality higher than the highest… If only I could get my hand on one of them during the auction...:”

Lan Lang-Lang showed disdain, “Come on, dear lord Zuo. Forget about that, will you? With our wealth, we can just afford one for sure, but… the question is there is no way we have the chance to win the bid. Those noble-blooded guys will fight until bleeding their fists.”

Zuo Wu-Ji nodded and sighed.

The three of them were called ‘the three lords in town’ like they had a splendid title, however, compared with those lads truly born with noble blood, they couldn’t even be mentioned in the same sentence.

The noble clans were able to function alongside each other peacefully, because they made sure not to touch each other’s businesses.

But they disliked each other for sure.

Among the three clans, the clan of Zuo was somehow stronger than the other two - the clan of Lan and the clan of Ye. Zuo Wu-Ji had elder brothers and he was substantially given up by the clan because of his disease. Ye Xiao was the only son of the Ye clan, while Lan Lang-Lang was also the only son of the Lan clan…

“The real noble clans…” Lan Lang-Lang sighed.

“While the royal court has existed for a hundred years, the clans have existed for thousands upon thousands of years…” Zuo Wu-Ji smiled, “Our clans are far from those noble clans. To be able to compare ourselves with the true noble clans, we will need to prosper for at least another century…” He shook his head helplessly.

“What noble clan has a foppish black sheep like you?” Lan Lang-Lang disdainfully said.

“Oh, so you think you are better than me?” Zuo Wu-Ji glared at him.

It looked like the very next moment would be the start of a fight.

Ye Xiao felt an agitation, he had never felt before, awaken deep down within his bones.

“Stop! Shut up both of you. This is my house ok? Get somewhere else to fight… Hmm, well if you are really that bored, why don’t we go make some trouble for Wang Xiao-Nian?” Ye Xiao smiled and thought, “The blood ginseng shouldn’t be wasted in some mortal’s hand right? I wouldn’t think anything of it if I don’t know about it, but I do know now. So I shall not let such thing escape my hands…”

Wang Xiao-Nian was somehow related to the poison after all…

“Sure!” Zuo Wu-Ji and Lan Lang-Lang were both meddlers. They both raised their hands and got excited when hearing the suggestion.